Upcoming Snippets
by Keldin
Summary: Snippet/Scenes for upcoming chapters of my fanfictions. Seeking comments, questions, suggestions.
1. BHP: Harry,Ron talk marriage,redheads

Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters aren't mine, folks. If they were, I'd be much less worried about money matters than I am now.

Note: Originally written early morning 1/6/2010 when I couldn't sleep.

An unbeta'd snippet from an upcoming chapter of Being Harry Potter XCIV. I'm not sure WHERE/WHEN it will pop up - probably not for a couple of chapters, which means quite a while at the glacial pace I write at. Oh, and a tip of the hat to chem prof, whose inspiration for this scene I can see from miles away. I know this is not as good as that one's (heck, it's not as good as it sounded in my head while lying in bed), but it IS just a draft version. Knowing me, it'll see at least two or three revisions before going into my story (and to my beta). (Especially seeing as I'm writing this at 4am my time.) Maybe I'll start feeling inspired again. I know Ron needs work, for one. Comments are welcome. In fact, please do!

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"But you're supposed to marry Ginny!" Ron exclaimed, managing to draw the attention of the entirety of the Gryffindor Common Room to the squashy chairs that Ron and Harry were sitting in while doing their essays for Charms. Hermione wasn't there. She'd gone to the library to look for books on meditation techniques. Harry had doubted any would be there, but Hermione had insisted on trying.

Harry leaned forward, and glanced from one side to the other. He didn't see Ginny, but that didn't mean she wasn't nearby. Even if she wasn't, the way gossip traveled, she'd certainly hear about it soon enough. "What makes you say that, Ron?"

Ron didn't even blink - and certainly hadn't noticed that the room had gone deadly quiet - as he responded. "Because Potters always marry redheads!"

Ah, there she was. Harry still couldn't see the youngest Weasley, but the way the others in the room were all looking in the same direction was an indicator - Ginny was behind him and Ron. Good. It was a little cruel, sure, but this was a way to nip that little crush before it went anywhere. It probably wouldn't help if this was one of the Love Potion Ginny's, but, if it wasn't, every little bit counted. "Uh... I assume this theory is based on the fact that my dad married my mum?"

Ron, of course, nodded.

Harry sat back in his chair thoughtfully. "Ron, don't take this the wrong way, but sometimes you can be..." 'A real idiot.' He shook his head, censoring himself before he called the volatile redhead something that made his face turn the same color as his hair (and make him turn off his ears). "... really, *really* wrong. You know my dad, yeah, but do you know anything about his dad, my granddad?"

Ron just shook his head.

"My granddad, Charlus Potter, he married Dorea Black, right? Unsurprisingly, Grandmother Dorea had black hair. In fact, her black hair is where me and my dad got ours. Granddad - and many Potters before him - generally had brown hair ranging from a light sandy brown to as dark as Hermione's hair is. But that's neither here nor there. Let's assume, for now, that what you say is true, that Potters marry redheads. Why would you think that means I'd marry Ginny?"

Ron opened his mouth to respond, but Harry just continued, rolling right over his potential response. "First, she's too young. It'd just be plain wrong to even consider dating her for another couple of years at least. Half plus seven and all." Chances were that those raised in the Wizarding World wouldn't know that urban 'rule,' but Harry kept going. "Plus, I barely know her. Aside from the end of second year, and when I've been to your house, I've rarely talked to her at all. And, at your house, she has a tendency to squeak and run away when I'm nearby. Not exactly conducive to a relationship."

Harry could practically feel the heat rising behind him, though he didn't know if it was in anger or embarrassment on Ginny's part. Still, best to bull ahead. "Leaving that aside, she's your little sister, mate, and you and your family are like my own family, right? So, would *you* be willing to marry your little sister?" He rushed ahead before Ron could answer. Or, more precisely, before Ron could appear to be thinking about it. There were just some things that Harry did NOT really want to know about purebloods.

"And then there's the fact that she's a year behind us. We'll both be out of school and looking for work by then. Maybe we'll on the Pro Quidditch circuit. If that were the case, I'd see her once a week during the summer? Maybe? And not at all while she was here for her seventh year."

"Much better to choose from our own class," Harry went on. "So, let's see. There's Tracey Davis. She's a redhead. Cute too."

Ron growled. "She's a Slytherin. You can't be thinking about dating her!"

Harry rolled his eyes. "So what? She's a Hogwarts student. Magic is magic. But fine. Let's consider someone else, then. Susan Bones is a redhead too. She's also one of our - or at least my - best friends since we all rode the Express up together first year. She's not like my little sister..." Here Harry paused. "Actually, she's not related to me at all. You and Ginny are. Another point against." He shook his head and went on. "She's a half-blood, like me - another point of commonality. She's funny, loving and very loyal. And, to use the kind of crude thing most of us guys - and some girls - use to judge, she's very, ah, attractive." The crowd, still suspiciously silent, immediately came to the correct conclusion that Harry was referring to the size of the girl's breasts. Susan Bones was easily a C-cup, and had been before she'd come back to school for her fourth year. And she was still growing. Ginny would likely never get past her current A-cup.

"And then, if we leave aside the personal interactions, there's the political connections. The Bones family is one of the few remaining Ancient and Noble Houses, just like the Blacks and Potters are." Uh oh. Ron was getting red now. He never liked being reminded of how much money Harry actually had. But he'd already started, so the only thing to do was to keep going. "The Boneses have a seat on the Wizengamot, and they're fairly influential besides." Neither of which the Weasleys had or were. "Let's not even mention that Susan's aunt is not only known to be one of the most honorable women in Wizarding Britain, but possibly the third or even second most powerful *person*, behind the Minister of Magic, in it." Which would be one reason why Voldemort would go after her personally if he managed to resurrect himself.

"Throw all that political power together and we could do a lot of good for the world. Imagine, for example, if we could get Wolfsbane subsidized and then could strike all the bad anti-Werewolf legislation. Let people like Professor Lupin get jobs doing what they do well, live somewhat better than hand-to-mouth. This world pretty much expects the Boy-Who-Lived to save it..." And the tone of irritation there was easily heard. "... so why not let me have the tools to do it? So, why should I marry Ginny?"

People had started murmuring and talking again, but it didn't hide the retreating feet that Harry could hear behind him. Yes, it *was* cruel, but sometimes you had to be a little cruel to be kind.

"You should marry for love, though," Ron said in a chiding tone of voice. "Don't you love Ginny?"

Harry shrugged. "I dunno. It's not like I have much in the way of examples, do I? So maybe I do. But like I said, she's like my little sister. You don't marry your sister. Or your cousin, as this case may be." He added, after a moment. "And who's to say I don't love Susan? They say that friendship is a kind of love, after all. Or Tracey for that matter? I don't know her at all, but she could be the best thing that ever happened to me and I wouldn't know it." 


	2. BHP: Harry,Hermione talk rituals,dmagic

Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters aren't mine, folks. If they were, I'd be much less worried about money matters than I am now.

Note: Originally written today (4/20/2010)

Another unbeta'd snippet from an upcoming chapter of Being Harry Potter XCIV, likely to appear within the next two chapters.

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"But, Harry, rituals are dark magic!"

"Pfft," Harry rasperried. "Rituals are like pretty much every other kind of magic, neither dark nor light. Speaking of which, can you give me a definition of 'dark magic' in the first place?"

"D...dark magic is magic that is bound by the Minist..."

"I asked what dark magic was, not what the Ministry of Magic said it was, Hermione," Harry interrupted, leaving the girl gaping like a fish as she tried to find a definition that didn't include the words 'Ministry of Magic'. After a few moments, he continued, "I'll answer it for you, Hermione. You see, the thing is that, at its base, magic is only about two things: power and intent. Power differs from one person to another, from the levels in what we call 'muggles' and squibs, up through people like Dumbledore and Riddle. But intent. That's another sticky wicket. Intent has other names, of course, like Will - I'm sure you've read Eddings' _The Belgariad_, right? The Will and the Word? Don't be so surprised. Every concept of magic that's in existence has been exposed by non-magicals at some point or another. Control is another way of referring to it, and that's what we're actually supposed to be learning at Hogwarts - control."

"But that's neither here nor there. *Dark* magic is magic that is intended to cause harm. Dumbledore is one of the greatest dark wizards in the world. I'm a dark wizard. You're a dark witch. We have an entire class in which we learn spells whose intent is to cause harm, not that it's ever been taught very well. But dark magic, in and of itself, is not evil. What the Ministry should be controlling is magic used for evil purposes. That's a far more difficult problem, though, since judging intent is next to impossible. There are really very few actual disciplines of magic that are inherently evil."

"You mean like necromancy," Hermione said, nodding, but Harry shook his head.

"Most of our healing magic finds its source in the Necromancer's art, Hermione, just like most doctors learn from autopsying cadavers. I'm not saying that you should ignore someone claiming to be a Necromancer, but that you should look on things and question, not just assume."

"Now, to get back to this ritual. It actually would be considered dark magic, because it requires the causing of harm, even if it's only a little. On the other hand, what it can do is significant."

As Harry turned to the table, a large piece of parchment appeared, along with a biro and... a compass? Not the kind used for navigation, but the kind used in high-school math classes to make circles. Harry placed the biro into the compass. After taking a moment to eyeball the distance between the center and edges of his hand, he set the compass wide enough to draw a circle larger than the hand. Then he drew another three concentric circles each (four total) at least two centimeters wider than the one before. He drew four lines in the central circle at the cardinal points, essentially dividing it into four parts. The outermost circle gained lines at the east and north points, dividing it into two parts, of which one was three times bigger than the other. The inner circle went unchanged. Hermione, for her part, went quiet, obviously trying to figure out what these basic shapes had to do with rituals. Harry wouldn't leave her hanging long.

"Now, this particular ritual is one that I use in every world. Only the frequency I use it changes. Sometimes I only use it once a month, sometimes once a week, and sometimes daily. You really don't want to know about the worlds where I have to use it daily. Also, this particular ritual once actually killed Voldemort... though it was a particularly incautious one. Or, possibly, a particularly paranoid one." He shrugged and looked back down. Drawing his wand, he pressed the thumb of the opposite hand down in the inner circle, and then tapped said thumb with his wand, hissing for a few seconds. Hermione twitched slightly, but, almost immediately, ink began spreading around the page following the line of the circle and filling it in. It continued circling over and over and over again until all of the spots of the inner circle appeared to be filled.

"That particular parsel-spell simply describes an object in runic terms. It's much faster than me having to hand-write it. And less likely to include errors," Harry said. "Pity it can't be used for anything other than paper or parchment." He shrugged again, then hesitated. "And now comes the part that makes it dark." Flashing into existence where the compass had disappeared was a simple set of fingernail clippers, a pair of scissors, and a sharp pin. He used each of these, the first to trim some of his fingernail, the second to cut a couple of his hairs, and the third to poke his finger and draw blood. He ignored the brief look of surprised horror on Hermione's face, especially at the last, as he placed each into one part of the middle circle. Finally, he lifted his wand again and drew it along the side of his bloodied finger, chanting a spell in Latin that Hermione did not recognize.

"It's a skin peeling spell," he said, without looking it up. "Butchers and juice-makers normally use it to, well, peel skin. Or fruit, obviously." The resulting skin was placed in the fourth section of the middle circle, followed by a quick healing spell that healed both the poked and skinned finger. Four more times, Harry chanted the parsel-spell he had before, replacing the fingernail, hair, blood and skin with more densely packed runes in each section.

Finally, he got to the outermost circle. In the smaller northeast section, he incanted briefly before the entire section flared into flame for a brief moment, then died, leaving more runes. In the larger section, there was no visible response when Harry chanted the final spell.

"Okay, now to explain," Harry said, replacing his wand and turning to Hermione. "The innermost circle is where I'm going to place my hand, and channel magic into it. It acts as the power source for this ritual. The next circle, as you may recall, describes my thumb, or, more specifically, describes the concept of 'me'. On occasion, I've engorged this to try and read all that, but it's like trying to read War and Peace in 1-point Times Roman from a distance of twenty meters. It can be done, but it involves a whole lot of headache. The next circle after that describes the four things I'm looking for - my skin, my blood, my nails, and my hair. Finally, the outermost circle tells the ritual what I want to do when I find these things. The northeastern section, where I deposited my hair in the next circle, contains the runes for a simple fire spell. The rest contains the runes for a vanishing spell. In short, what this ritual does, when powered, is vanish any nail, skin, or blood that it finds, and burns any hair. Because this is a simple ritual, its range is pretty much unlimited."

Hermione blinked a couple of times, and then asked, "Why burn your hair instead of vanishing it?"

"Er..." Harry said, a faint blush coloring his skin. "Because people who collect my hair usually end up putting it in some kind of 'Harry Potter shrine,' which creeps me the hell out. I only do the others mostly because they can be used in Polyjuice Potion."

Hermione blinked again. "Polyjuice?"

"One Polyjuice Potion plus one Aging Potion equals skeevy fangirl sleeping with the Boy-Who-Lived. Thank Merlin most worlds haven't discovered the version of Polyjuice that changes the internals as well as the externals." He shuddered. "I've dealt with more than enough paternity claims than I care for."

"Wait, you can't mean..."

"Why do you think I started using this ritual?" Harry said with a revolted shiver.

Hermione just shook her head in dismay, but went on, "Well, what about what's in your body? You don't want to burn your hair off and vanish all your skin, nails, and blood, right?"

Harry nodded, "Sorry, I left something out. Since the runes are describing items that have been separated from my body, they describe something which is considered 'dead' for lack of a better word. Anything still connected to my body or inside it is considered alive, so it doesn't vanish or burn."

"Okay," she nodded. "But... what about people who SHOULD have your blood or such?"

"Like who?" Harry asked.

"Well, Madam Pomfrey?"

"What does she need my blood for? Any kind of changes to Potions that are specific to my blood chemistry are either already made or can be asked for at the time."

"What do you mean specific to your body chemistry?" Hermione asked.

"In some worlds, for example, the introduction of basilisk venom and phoenix tears introduced a new factor. This might even be one of them." Another shrug. "Anyway, if they need my blood or other parts of my body, they can damn well ask," Harry said. "And they better have a good reason too. I'm just protecting myself here." With that, he placed his hand in the center circle and channeled his magic. Immediately, there was an answering pulse of magic and it began spreading in all directions.

In two girls dorms and two boys dorms in Gryffindor Tower (as well as several others scattered across Hogwarts), there was a flash of green flame. Noone was hurt.

In the Hogwarts Headmaster's Office, several silver devices began to shriek, blow out large amounts of black smoke, and then shudder to a halt. The room's sole occupant turned to stare in horrified dread.

In a ramshackle home just outside Ottery St. Catchpole, a hand on a certain clock fell to the ground, charred beyond recognition. 


	3. BHP: HarryHermione talk blood vs power

Author's Note: A really short snippet written off the top of my head for a message on CaerAzkaban. I don't own Harry or Hermione. This snippet will probably occur sometime in the next two chapters.

"So you think that pure-bloods actually do have more power?" Hermione asked.

"Eh, not likely. In my experience, pure-bloods actually have the least power, overall. Just look at Ron or Draco. I could easily make a point of half-bloods having the most, though," Harry replied.

"Oh?" Hermione questioned, her eyebrows rising in surprise.

"Well, put it this way: over the last, say, fifty years, which European witch or wizard has been the most powerful?"

"That's easy," Hermione said. "Professor Dumbledore, of course."

"Easy," Harry said. "But wrong. Dum... all right, all right, Professor Dumbledore is number two. Voldemort - Tom Riddle - is actually a third or even half-again more powerful than the Headmaster is. And that doesn't include any power-enhancing rituals he might have done. Just the raw power he was born with."

"But... the Headmaster's the only person he's afraid of?"

"Skill makes a difference, Hermione," Harry said. "Professor Dumbledore has decades on Tom, even more because he's spent the last one essentially floating about in spirit form." He shrugged. "To continue, leaving off the Headmaster, who is the most powerful teacher at Hogwarts?"

Hermione opened her mouth to answer the same way as she had before, with assurance that she was right. But the previous answer had thrown her, so her tone was much more questioning when she responded, "Professor McGonagall?"

Harry grinned, but shook his head, "Your loyalty to her does you well, but Professor McGonagall is in her seventies, and her raw power has already started declining, as I mentioned before. The person I'm looking for is just off his or her final power spike."

Hermione frowned thoughtfully, then wrinkled her nose, "You mean Professor Snape."

"Aye," Harry replied. "All right, last question. Who, arguably, is the most powerful *student* at Hogwarts?"

"You," Hermione said, immediately. "There's noone else at the school who could chase off more than a hundred Dementors at once."

"That's not quite true," Harry replied. "But you'd never believe it if I told you who else could do it. Either way, that's pretty much correct." Harry wasn't blushing at all. It was like they were discussing the news.

"But that doesn't prove anything," Hermione said. "I mean, I know you're a half-blood, and so is V-Voldemort, but Professors Dumbledore and Snape..."

"... are half-bloods as well," Harry interrupted.

"What?" 


End file.
